The kooky monster

Kristen Schaal learnt early on about the value of
performing to cows, she tells Stacey Kalish.

Kristen Schaal is bringing dorky back. With her helium-pitched
voice and Shirley Temple hairdo, this self-proclaimed "awkward
outrovert" is best known for her role as Mel, the lone superfan on
Flight of the Conchords, the internet and TV sensation
about a Kiwi rock duo trying to make it big in New York.

But you may also remember Schaal from blink-and-you'll-miss-her
cameos on shows such as Law & Order and Ugly
Betty, or in the movies Kate & Leopold and
Norbit. But even then, her appearance and unerring
instinct for the uncomfortable are memorable.

"I don't think (my comedy) comes from a place of being brave at
all," she explains. "I think it comes from a place of not really
understanding how people judge you. And having, I don't know, some
sort of weird un-self-awareness."

That's all on display when she arrives at a New York cafe for our
interview. There are sporadic bursts of animation, several
character voices, and a lot of infectious laughter. She'll suddenly
pause mid-sentence to apologise that she has lentils on her
teeth.

At one point, Schaal enacts, in a mangled Kiwi accent, the scene in
which the boys from Flight of the Conchords cast her from a tape of
her performance at the 2006 HBO Comedy Festival. Schaal mimes
sitting at a computer typing.

"Hey, there's this video of this girl." Leans back without stopping
to type. Glances at the video for less than a second. Turns back to
the computer, facial expression and body language unchanged, and
says, "Yip. That's good."

Next day, she got a call asking her to come in and read with
various husbands. (In the show, Mel is married and has her
obedient, demeaned husband drive her around looking for Bret and
Jermaine.)

Schaal's Mel is a wicked scene-stealer. She pops up on Bret's and
Jermaine's stoop or sidles up to them trying to smell their
necks.

"It's so funny because, when I started doing Mel's lines, the guys
were authentically freaked out by her. Before I would even start
talking after a shoot, they were like, 'Wait, is this you or
Mel?'."

Today, she looks straight out of Happy Days in her bobby
socks and pink-tartan jumper. On her black beanie, she's pinned a
red, plastic birdie brooch - another sign of Schaal's obsession
with feathered friends.

A quick google yields several pictures of her with birds, often
dead: cradling a stuffed rooster, perhaps, or perching a fake
budgie on her finger. She also has a popular online skit show,
Penelope: Princess of Pets.

She has, she admits, a thing about animals. She blames it on her
childhood, growing up on a farm in Longmont, Colorado, with her
dad, a construction worker, her mother, a secretary and a brother
who was three years older.

"As a teenager, it sucked. Especially pre-driver's licence because
you were stuck on the farm. I was at the mercy of my older brother
who refused to drive me anywhere because I was so uncool."

It's hard to know why he thought that when his sister used to kill
time by performing for the livestock.

"The cows were a captive audience. They would come to the trough
and I would sing to them. Occasionally, they would gaze up at me
blankly, but I would give them the show of their lives. Once you
have performed to cows, you can perform anywhere."

But not all the cows could make her shows. There was the time a
young Schaal came home to discover the freezer packed with unmarked
meat. It was her favourite cow, Bella, who had fallen ill with a
hoof disease, and thus ended up at the butcher and then on the
Schaal family's dinner table for the next year.

"To be honest", Schaal admits, "I don't even like animals. I think
they are kind of tragic."

Schaal moved to New York straight after college to live the
"dream": weekly stand-up-comedy open-mic nights, waitressing,
working as a paralegal, more waitressing, being fired from playing
the character Ms Peppermint Twist at a toy store, and then some
more waitressing.

"There were five years when it was really bare. I would write my
goals down and it would say, 'Book SOMETHING'."

After a six-month spell unemployed, Schaal decided to give comedy
another go. "For some reason, I started doing improv again and it
all clicked together and one thing led to the next."

In October 2005, her luck turned when she was written up in a
feature article in New York magazine called "The 10 Funniest New
Yorkers You Haven't Heard Of": also on the list is Melbourne
International Comedy Festival (MICF) fave Demetri Martin.

In 2006, the HBO Comedy Festival invited her to perform. After she
won best alternative comic, career obstacles fell like
dominoes.

But the sudden success of Flight of the Conchords, which
will air on Ten this year, took Schaal by surprise. Indeed, the
international success of a minor HBO sitcom, centred on a New
Zealand faux-folk act, took everyone involved in it by surprise.
Who knew that running gags about the Australia-NZ rivalry would
play so well in the US? Maybe Melburnians would: Bret McKenzie and
Jermaine Clement had their first taste of success in winning best
newcomer at 2003's MICF.

Schaal says she doesn't have any obsessive fans of her own, but she
does get noticed on the streets - and receives the occasional
online marriage proposal, which sounds disturbingly Mel-like.
"Especially later in the evening when people are drunk. That's when
they come out a lot."

Still, success has its rewards. Now that she's vaguely famous, her
brother concedes that she is somewhat cool. She is also enjoying
some enviable job opportunities. She has written for South
Park ("I gave them my two cents and they kept the change," she
told the AV Club); the BBC is interested in working with her; she's
performing stand-up for much larger crowds; and, after her festival
stint, she travels to New Orleans to shoot a small role in a John
C. Reilly film, Cirque du Freak.

"I would only want to play really interesting and even grotesque
characters," says Schaal, on how she feels about playing freaks.
"Other roles for leading women are so f---ing boring and lame. All
the women on TV look the same.

"If you want to call it freak, you want to call it ugly, fine. But
they definitely have the more interesting perspectives on the world
than any of the characters you have ever written for a pretty girl.
So I don't mind at all, I prefer it." She pauses to think for a
second before laughing, "I don't think I could play one of those
other characters. I would be so stressed out. I think I would be on
every take, like, 'OMG, did I look pretty enough? Did I look like
Jessica Simpson at all?'"

Kristen Schaal - As You Have Probably Never Seen Her Before
is on at the Melbourne Town Hall until April 13. Tues-Sat 8.30pm,
Sun 7.30pm.

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